The Paranoid Optimist: An Integrative Evolutionary Model of Cognitive Biases
Abstract
Human cognition is often biased, from judgments of the time of impact of approaching objects all the way through to estimations of social outcomes in the future. We propose these effects and a host of others may all be understood from an evolutionary psychological perspective. In this article, we elaborate error management theory (EMT; Haselton & Buss, 2000). EMT predicts that if judgments are made under uncertainty, and the costs of false positive and false negative errors have been asymmetric over evolutionary history, selection should have favored a bias toward making the least costly error. This perspective integrates a diverse array of effects under a single explanatory umbrella, and it yields new content-specific predictions.
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Many biological features or cognitive traits were selected for fulfilling a certain function despite rarely doing so or even having maladaptive effects.
“The literature offers many examples of biological features or cognitive traits that were selected for fulfilling a certain function despite rarely doing so or even having maladaptive effects (Millikan 1984;Haselton and Nettle 2006).”
From What Is the Function of Confirmation Bias? (2022) · cites this paper as Haselton and Nettle 2006
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- Authors
- Haselton, M. G., & Nettle, D.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Newcastle University (GB)
- ORCID
- Nettle, Daniel
- Venue
- Personality and Social Psychology Review
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2006-02
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 47-66
- ISSN
- 1088-8683 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-7957
- OpenAlex
- W2134395675
- Cited by
- 838
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 36 · 2025: 40 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 48 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 67 · 2020: 59 · 2019: 43 · 2018: 52 · 2017: 51 · 2016: 46 · 2015: 53 · 2014: 38 · 2013: 28 · 2012: 45
- FWCI
- 35.60
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Personality and Social Psychology Review (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Keywords
- cognitive biases, error management theory, evolutionary psychology, false positives and false negatives, judgment under uncertainty, optimism
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Avoidance Learning, Cognition, Cognitive Dissonance, Culture, Biological Evolution, Humans, Illusions, Internal-External Control, Judgment, Models, Psychological, Paranoid Personality Disorder, Psychological Theory, Social Perception, Likelihood Functions, Self Efficacy
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